How we cite our quotes: (Paragraph)
Quote #7
We are surely doomed to hover continually upon the brink of Eternity, without taking a final plunge into the abyss. (20)
The fear here is one of purgatory: of never going forward or backward, but just being stuck. It may describe the narrator's state of being as much as the position of the ship. But it also might point to the reason these zombie sailors are so bent on diving headfirst into a whirlpool. Through the narrator's many descriptions, we get the idea that these guys have been sailing the seven seas for far too long, and at the end of the story, they'll finally get the sweet release of—whatever it is that's at the bottom of the whirlpool.
Quote #8
About a league on either side of us, may be seen, indistinctly and at intervals, stupendous ramparts of ice, towering away into the desolate sky, and looking like the walls of the universe. (23)
Poe throws the narrator up against the big, bad universe here: scary because it's so much larger than him… and probably couldn't care less if he lives or dies.
Quote #9
Oh, horror upon horror! The ice opens suddenly to the right, and to the left, and we are whirling dizzily. (27)
The finale arrives and the whirlpool gets ready to swallow up the narrator, punctuating Poe's idea that not every exploration story has a happy ending. And since this is a message this guy is writing down as all this goes down, we'll never know the real ending, which makes everything all the more mysterious and creepy.